For the past four years, interdisciplinary art collective teamLab has hosted a special exhibition at Takeo Hot Springs at Mifuneyama Rakuen Park in Kyushu, Japan, creating a breath-taking, digital world that has to be seen to be believed. They have once again returned, unveiling major updates to their exhibition A Forest Where Gods Live – earth music & ecology, as well as a completely new one that runs in tandem with it.
Running now until 4 November, this year’s teamLab exhibition is larger in scale, with over 19 artworks (many of which have never been seen before) being hosted across the 500,000 sq metre grounds of Mifuneyama Rakuen. The exhibition aims to break the boundaries between humans, nature, technology and art, playing with the forms of the site’s giant rocks, caves, forests and gardens, incorporating them into the pieces. It includes Floating Resonating Lamps - One Stroke, where Lampshades made of Murano Glass float on the surface of a lake, shining brightly whenever the surface sways or whenever a person stands nearby. The light is transmitted to the other lamps, travelling through only one at a time, with the pathways constantly changing.
teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live, Ruins and Heritage - THE NATURE OF TIME, takes place during the daytime in the ruins of Mifuneyama Rakuen, offering a completely different experience from the outdoor night-time exhibition. It includes Megaliths in the Bath House Ruins, a series of linked objects that feature moving motifs rendered in real-time by a computer programme and continuously changing due to the movement of visitors, and Butterflies Dancing in the Depths of the Underground Ruins, Transcending Space, which sees the colourful creatures filling the entire building with vibrant, shifting movements.
teamLab are also hosting exhibitions elsewhere in Japan, with teamLab: Impermanent Flowers Floating in a Continuous Sea set to open at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa on 9 August and Digitized Forest at the World Heritage Site of Shimogamo Shrine set to return to Kyoto on 17 August to 2 September.
More information can be found at the official teamLab website.
